Jennifer R. Cash, Cultural Revival and the Persistence of Identity in Moldova

For nearly three-quarters of a century, anthropologists, alongside folklorist, sociologists, and others have steadily documented multiple processes of cultural revival and revitalization, amassing a rich body of evidence to testify to the flexibility and resilience of culture. This focus on successful revivals has generated a wide literature that parallels and supports the growing attention to identity and ethnicity as key concerns across the social sciences. In the following pages, I refer to this literature as I examine the limits of cultural revival in the post-Soviet Republic of Moldova, primarily the country’s folkloric movement, which is the subject of my doctoral research and first book. In this broader field of vision, there are questions to be asked: who is undertaking revival work? What are their goals? What are their methods? And – whether they succeed or fail – what are the conditions that enable this? Although I pose these questionsin specific reference to post-Soviet Moldova, they could be asked of many communities, to advance our understanding of how collective identities are established, negotiated, and changed over time

Aesthetics · Clan · Cultural identity · Folklore · Folkloristics · Identity (music · Ideology · Negotiation · Parallels · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gender Studies · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Soviet and Russian History

• National celebrations in representations of Chisinau urbanites

  Open Access•Нина Иванова•Journal of Ethnology and…•2024

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